Recent years have seen an increase in computing systems that utilize touchscreen technology. Indeed, it is now common for portable and non-portable computing devices to utilize input interfaces that rely primarily on touch-based input received via a touchscreen or other touch-sensitive interface. Nevertheless, while conventional touch-based input interfaces provide a useful tool for receiving and processing user input, various problems and drawbacks exist with conventional touch-based interfaces.
For example, conventional touchscreens often fail to provide adequate space. For instance, as touchscreen interfaces become more complex, applications (e.g., digital keyboard applications) attempt to fit more and more inputs within a limited space, thereby increasing clutter as well as making it difficult to fully utilize the touchscreen interface. As a result of the increased clutter and complexity, conventional touch-based input systems often result in receiving incorrect inputs, inadvertent selection of multiple inputs, and other inefficiencies related to receiving and processing user inputs.
In addition to inefficiencies in the design of conventional input interfaces, conventional touch-based input systems generally fail to provide tactile and mechanical feedback that is often helpful to an end-user. Indeed, conventional input interfaces that include a mechanical keyboard and mouse provide tactile and mechanical feedback that enables a user to provide inputs and commands without frequently looking away from a screen to ensure that inputs are received correctly. In contrast, conventional touch-based input systems do not provide the same tactile and mechanical feedback. As a result, users often input incorrect commands and/or find themselves frequently looking away from a display area when interacting with the touch-based interface. As a result, conventional touch-based interfaces often result in a clunky or inefficient experience, particularly when utilizing on-screen keyboards or other more involved touch-based interfaces.
Moreover, conventional input interfaces fail to accommodate individual characteristics of end-users. For example, conventional touch-based interfaces are typically universal, providing the same size and orientation of input icons regardless of the size of an individual's hand or the preference of the individual with regard to which hand interacts with an interface. Moreover, conventional touch-based interfaces often fail to account for varying sizes and input capabilities of touch-based interfaces between different types of computing devices (e.g., mobile devices, tablets, hybrid touch-based and non-touch-based interfaces). As a result, conventional touch-based interfaces often fail to provide an effective interface for a large number of users that have large or small hands, have unconventional preferences (e.g., one-handed typing, left-handed typing, etc.) or that that use applications across multiple computing devices having different types of input interfaces.
These along with additional problems and issues exist with regard to conventional touch-based input systems.